Japanese game market doing better
The market is up 33% in the first half of the 2006. Unsurprisingly, Nintendo played a large role. While I prepare the next news point, you pick one of the two following arguments:

– The Japanese game market is being revitalized by innovation. The success of the DS is a sure sign that the Wii will do well in Japan.

– The Japanese game market is being revitalized by handhelds. This does not mean their interest in consoles will pick up.

Ok, now find a friend who picked the argument you didn’t. Found someone? Excellent, now debate.

“Damn, I really need to shave my head and lose some weight.”

Microsoft’s iPod killer coming this Christmas
Funny, MS Word doesn’t recognize iPod as a word. A lot of powerful companies have gone up against Apple and none have taken the portable MP3 player market from them. Knowing that J. Allard is spearheading MS’s music player also makes me want it to fail.

Blizzard looking into all three next gen systems
A posting on their site looking for new employees mentioned that experience working with the PS3, 360 and Wii was a bonus. This has caused much speculation. Is Blizzard simply not burning any bridges this early in the new race, or can we expect World of Wiicraft?

CNN speculates that the Wii may launch early
Have analysts ever been wrong? Besides constantly, I mean. Nintendo has begun manufacturing Wii’s so that led to speculation that the system would launch earlier than expected, possibly even in late September. While Nintendo has revealed no new information besides saying they’ll be revealing new information in September, they are sticking to the 4th quarter launch date. My fingers inform me that September is one month too early to be included in the 4th quarter, so October seems to be the earliest we’ll see Wii.

Launching early could be very beneficial for the Wii, but it could also ultimately harm it. The arguments go like so: BY launching early, Nintendo beats Sony to the market. It’ll be easier to get 200 of peoples’ dollars before they spend half a grand on a PS3. Also, the people who already have a 360 probably will be satiated with two consoles. The other side says that launching a month early will result in launch titles that aren’t as good as they could be. The longer iffy games like Red Steel are worked on, the better, and if another month allows Nintendo to make Twilight Princess perfect then it’s absolutely in their best interest to not launch early.

The compromise I have come to is that Nintendo should launch the Wii early, but only in my living room.

Watch out, Nesticle. Nintendo is coming to crush you.

Patents the EFF isn’t crazy about Nintendo’s patent on emulation
I wonder if this has been going on for years, or if this is a recent attempt now that they have created the Virtual Console. Trying to patent emulation in its entirety is ridiculous, and if it actually causes trouble in the future you can expect Nintendo to lose a lot of the credibility they have gained in the last year as being the “good guys” again.

And besides, if they were so worried about emulation, then why did they stick with cartridges for so many damn years?

Sony talks big about the PS3s online abilities
The PS3 will have not just third party e-distribution games, like the 360 thus far has had, but their own internally developed titles. When Gamasutra asked the Sony drone if there was any chance of e-distribution games being compatible with both systems, the drone replied, “We’re looking for fresh, new ideas that fully exploit the power of PlayStation 3. Our 1st party projects are all unique to PS3. Some of our games, by virtue of their design and hardware demands, simply couldn’t work on Xbox 360.”

Pretend for a second this isn’t just PR chest thumping, which I’m sure it is, it would imply that Sony is working not just on small games for their version of Live Arcade. In order for the titles to not be possible on the 360 because of hardware constraints, they’d have to push the PS3 rather hard. Or perhaps just require a tilt sensing controller.

2 Comments

Dan said on
July 8, 2006:

I wonder what blizzard is developing for the consoles? Most likely not RTS games…Obviously something like WoW could be a real cash cow, but perhaps set in the world of diablo. Or are they hoping to make something like ghost again? (doubtful, but you never know)

Joe said on
July 10, 2006:

I doubt we’ll see World of Diablo for a while. Maybe even never. WoW basically is Diablo Online and I don’t see Blizzard wanting to make two games that similar back to back. If we see another Diablo game I’m betting it will only come with some new innovation. The buzz round the net has been (and I agree with it) that their next move will be World of Starcraft or just another Starcraft game. I think the market is ripe for a sci-fi mmorpg game as traditional rpg’s are getting a little old. Also Starcraft is a property that that’s been largely ignored (ghost doesn’t count) by Blizzard compared to their other games which is odd considering how popular it was (even compared to W3) and the plot implications in the expansion pack for a very strange sequel.

Also I think Diablo 2 kindof left a bad taste in the mouths of a lot of gamers.